(TAN): Air New Zealand’s online credit redemption tool has gone live now and it allows customers who hold credit directly with the airline to manage their credit online, the airline said.
The new online tool enables more than 300,000 customers who purchased a ticket with New Zealand Dollars to view a breakdown of their credit, including seat selection or carbon emissions offset, and use their credit to book new flights.
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Air New Zealand Chief Commercial and Customer Officer Cam Wallace says offering a self-service tool will make it simpler for customers to use their credit, without having to call the airline’s contact centre.
“Pre-COVID-19, we didn’t have the systems in place for customers to redeem credits at this scale, so our teams have had to build this long-term solution from scratch…. Customers now have more flexibility with using their credits, including the ability to use credit from an international flight to book a domestic one and vice versa, and for the credit owner to choose who the credit is used for. We’ve also extended the period in which customers can use their credit — they have until Dec. 31 2021 to book and a further 12 months after booking to travel,” Wallace said.
Throughout June and July, around 57,000 customers who had paid in full using Airpoints Dollars had the value of their fare returned as Airpoints Dollars.
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Air New Zealand Chief Digital Officer Jennifer Sepull said, “We wanted to create a solution that was intuitive and able to manage the large number of customers needing to redeem credit. Over the next few months, we’ll be working to evolve this credit tool to increase its self-service capability. At this stage, the online tool can only process credit from single bookings and we are actively working on extending this so credit from multiple flights can be combined and used. In the meantime, customers with multiple flights will still need to call our contact centre.”
If customers do not use the full value of their credit in one booking, the remaining balance will be available to view and use for as long as the credit is valid.
The airline is now working on a solution for its international customers and those who have booked through a travel agent. There are also a number of ticket types that will not have access to this tool immediately, for example group bookings. A solution is also being worked on for these.
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Good response
On July 21, just a day after the online tool went live, New Zealand’s flag carrier said customers had already redeemed NZD 1.36 million (USD 900,000) in credit.
Wallace said it’s been promising to see such a great response after just 24 hours of the tool being live. “We’re thrilled to see so many customers being able to use their credit and book flights online. So far, popular destinations have been Queenstown, Auckland and Christchurch.”
“In addition to customers redeeming credit, a lot are checking their balance and thinking about where they want to fly to next. To date, we’ve had around 38,000 customers use the tool to look up their credit balance,” he said.
